Updated on May 7, 2024
MARE #6 Revisited: What comes next?
It’s been more than two months since the closure of the last project MARE.
It’s a hard adaptation for us all – to have left that mythical natural land of sirens and sea creatures to fit in the world we chose, whether that be our home, Italy or anywhere else.
It is also impossible for us all, I guess, not to revisit daily the memories of what we lived. In fact, as time goes by we realize the subtle and the deepest changes these 9 months catalyzed in our lives. None of us left easily – How could it be? this was one of the biggest highlights in our stories so far! – so we’re finding ways of sprouting some of the many seeds MARE left in us. We all left with new resolutions for our future and as we rearrange our lives to these new marelini selves we’re spreading the love and teachings we kept from this period together, whether that be erasmus opportunities, volunteering meaning and importance, environment alertness and awareness and last but not the least, our personal progress towards the sea and the land, the animals, the nature, the other, towards ourselves. We grew to the size of a colossus (never mind the pasta, I mean it in a metaphorical way).
Lavoisier gathered (as others) in these timeless words:
Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything changes.
It’s hard to cope with the longings of marelini’s lives. But we also knew from the very beginning, as it is with everything else, it would end one day soon. But we don’t like fatalisms and we don’t stop chasing our ideals – it didn’t end. We carry it with us and we spread it wherever we are, giving it new forms. It’s in us, it’s us.
No one stays the same after Project MARE : we stay better, bigger, hungrier, stronger, more sensible, more aware, more human.
It’s a catalyst of dreams and ideals. We’ll be back for SURE. For now we’re rocking overseas.
That’s it for now, folks!
Updated on May 7, 2024
Cilento Trips Revisited – Marine Directive, Awareness and Growth
Cilento is a synonym of assessment studies on shore pollution and species welfare and abundance. It means beach cleanings, turtle care, first group dynamics and team work, but also first pizzas, first sun bathe and sleeping on the beach. In sum, tons of nature conservation and lots of party. We started and ended our summer in here.
I remember well rushing from shore to shore to collect and catalog copious amounts of trash that seem to never end as part of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), which is the first EU legislation specifically aimed at the protection of the marine environment and its natural resources, creating a framework for the sustainable use of European marine waters. It’s very much based on the Regional Sea Conventions. A Marine Strategy as such includes:
- an initial assessment of our marine waters,
- the determination of the good environmental status of these marine waters,
- the setting of environmental targets,
- the establishment and implementation of coordinated monitoring programmes, and
- the identification of measures or actions that need to be taken in order to achieve or maintain good environmental status.
This Strategy was implemented between 2008 and 2012 and all of these steps should be accomplished in the period of six years; this year we restarted the cycle. The assessment of a marine area and its further analysis of environmental status is complex and is made out of several parameters. One of them is Marine Litter. So together in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Environment and three Marine Protected Areas, that are Santa Maria di Castellabate, Costa degli Infreschi e della Masseta and Punta Campanella, us and our colleagues went to Cilento to collect and catalog trash from four types of beaches:
- from urban areas,
- river mouths,
- harbors or places with traces of maritime transport and\or fishing activity,
- remote areas not directly accessible through land or belonging to protected areas.
Then, having into account also other characteristics, we would sample 3 transects of beach of at least 33m long each separated by no longer than 50m. That meant a lot of beach to clean, lots of trash and countless hours cataloging them in detailed charts.
This allowed us to to go back there several times and meet its shorelines as we wouldn’t have dared to imagine: Sapri, Scario, Ogliastro, Spiaggia Lago, Pozzillo e Santa Maria di Castellabate were the places we went under this assessment.
Inherent to these long hours under the sun there were our first deep conversations on life and dream projects, our first swims in between the submerged rocks among fellow fishes; still remember my enthusiasm when I saw my first Donzella pavonina in its exotic colors – something I’ve never seen in my shores.
I think I can speak for all of us on how we’ve realized that trash seems to multiply under our noses: there’s always more and more of it as more you collect. Batteries of cars, endless bottles and metals, countless hygiene products, syringes, needles and pills discarded most probably through the toilet… It’s what we take from the experience: other than the breathtaking landscapes and unforgettable moments, the memory of endless trash also stays. And several times was not coming from the sea. People leave inumerous waste on the sands, like cigarette buds. On the small beach of Pozzillo, where we barely managed to put the three transects, both times we assessed it we collected around a thousand of them.
Then Joana joined Mimì and our colleague Linda on a hard task, always aiming assessment studies for the Marine Strategy: describing quantity and quality of fish communities and obtain data on the demographic structure for some target species through a method called Fish Underwater Visual Census, which consisted of using two complementary techniques: transects (25 x 5 m = 125 m²) and random paths (for 15 min).
The data collection was done both inside and outside of the MPAs, at three depth intervals (0-3, 4-7 and 12-18 meters) and in three different types of habitat, which were:
- rocky bottom,
- sandy bottom and
- prairie of Posidonia oceanica.
During this period there was also the opportunity to collect some data on the mortality of the bivalve Pinna Nobilis.
Joana was a lucky mermaid: inside Marina di Camerota she assessed Cala Vitiello, Punta Omo, Punta Falconara, la Cattedrale and Palinuro. Outside of it she went to Santa Maria di Castellabate, Ripe Rosse, Punta Licosa, Punta Scalla, Torricelle, Punta Tusina e Baia Trentova. These are the places where she was tackling this assessment.
From these experiences in Cilento we take memories.
For me it’s Ogliastro that appears in the foreground of my mind. That beach of which I’ve never seen its pebbles, always covered in banquettes higher than one meter of dead posidonia leaves. There we all went before the start of the season and there was I by its very end, beginnings of November. A yellowish cold sun illuminated everything, kissing all matter from its very low horizon. Everything was stained with posidonia, from the shore to the high banks where fishermen sit waiting patiently for their prey. Walking alone in the sunset was almost like stepping on clouds, so soft, so absent of solidness… like a dream. One wonders what hides in such massive compacts of dead leaves. That same beach in which I found a battery of a car, where dozens of meters ahead layed bottle after bottle, net after net, bucket after bucket… all made out of plastic.
Lost in contemplation, I found a juice bottle coming from Arabia. I wondered if it would be from Tunisia. Incredible how a moment of sacred communion with nature is profaned with the lack of care and interest, with the ignorance and recklessness of people towards their own waste.
Did it become natural?
The world as we know it does not sustain itself without plastic. We maintain our vertiginous desire for commodity by devouring insatiably natural resources, depriving nature of all its colors and life forms. It’s terrible beyond words.
Still, we cleaned all we could. We ran out of bags and so we used the bags and buckets we were collecting from the sea. I forgot how much trash we collected but I do remember the landscape and its feeling. I’ll never know what those banquettes were hiding but I do know this:
I dream of a sea free of plastic.
Updated on May 7, 2024
Against a Colossus in the Bay
It was the end of July, in the peak of the summer season in Southern Italy. Ieranto, the borderline bay of this peninsula that is called Sorrento. It’s clean water, with a temperature of 29°C, contains abundant fish populations and colorful flora that attracts dozens of people. Who knows how hot it was but we were distilling sweat all over. All in all, it was another sunny day monitoring the bay. I was sitting in the kayak, gazing at the horizon with its imponent Faraglioni and vast waters. In the dead hour I had no worries.
It was mid afternoon and not much was going on. I was actually thinking of jumping in the water, getting refreshed, seeing some mighty fishes, and jumping in the kayak again, nothing I haven’t done before. As I was getting on my kayak I saw a massive yacht crossing the middle of the bay. Set to action I whistled to my two colleagues, Tony and David, for them to join me; we paddled hard to reach them. In a split second we were fearlessly at its prow, like three ants in front of an elephant. We called them out, yelling at the hugeness of the floating body that it was not allowed to anchor… but in vain. Some of the passengers looked at us indifferently, they gave half a turn, head some dozens of meters away and SPLASH!, a huge double anchor falls on our bay, right in a meadow of Posidonia oceanica.
Who were these people?
The Superfun yacht has 40m length and on its stern it had the flag of the Cayman Islands. It was a luxury cruiser, to which you pay 80.000€ a week in order to have a period of breathless moments. But what kind of sick fun can you have if you destroy recklessly the places you so highly paid to visit?
We got closer to its stern and asked to speak with the captain. We were surprised to find that there was a rubber boat attached to this giant. When he finally came he started shouting rude and arrogantly, asking us who were we and under which authority were we speaking to him. He was red like a dragon. If he could have spit fire he would have decimated us into ashes in no time.
I gave him politely all of our cards, even if his attitude towards us outraged me. I explained to him that Ieranto was a protected area and therefore it had special requirements and restrictive rules, that we were guardians of the bay and our duty was to inform everyone that came in an illicit way how to play according to the rules.
He didn’t care about the reasons of the park. He daringly yelled what if he didn’t follow the rules. It was a test to my argumentation skills and my capacity for staying calm under disrespectul behavior towards us and our work. In the midst of his anger for being defied, I appealed to his care. By that moment several people had sorrounded us on the boat. I reasoned with him. I could not do much about them staying other than informing them and informing them that eventually they would be in contact with the Coastal Guard; that such a huge watercraft was an attractor to other kind of misconducts and that several threatened species were under them. So I said: “Respect our rules, help us to protect our bay.” The captain swallowed it hard. I was the one having the last word, for there was nothing he could reply back without looking bad in the eyes of his clients. So he looked angrily at me and turned away. I didn’t understand what it meant at the beginning. Moments later I heard the anchor being pulled out and the engines restarted.
But it didn’t finish there. The yacht left but left behind its spawn, the rubber boat. “But my clients will have a bathe in here!” – he spoke as it happened. He was a hard nut to crack. What else could we do? I said my colleagues we’ve done everything we could in the rightest way possible. So we were persistent and we waited next to them, not giving them the privacy they wished to have. We consider ourselves protectors of this bay and strong representants of the environment. As guardians we’re not here to fight but we do empower ourselves with solid argumentation and polite persistence. They eventually left and even though they trespassed, the rules and the values of the MPA persist.
For us it was a personal victory. Money plays high stakes and rises his influence over many voices and good morals. This time it didn’t. This time it was us and what we represent that stood higher than luxurious interest and reckless exploitation.
Updated on May 7, 2024
The bearer of a dying tradition
Eight in the morning, the alarm clock rings and I think it’s a lie. I don’t want to wake up. Ten brief minutes in the bed that tasted like seconds and that are burdensome in the dynamics to leave the house on time. I wear summer clothes, a tshirt burnt by the sun, torn shorts by salt and usage, anti cold pullover. I did a coffee in a rush and drank it in a shot. I ran down the stairs looking for my ride, a carrier of an ancestral tradition. His face is a map, his hands evidence the marks of all the resources one can find on the sea. His eyes are of a bright blue comparable to the marine sands lighter spots where Posidonia does not exist. With him I went fishing, to collect the nets he had thrown hours earlier.
Updated on May 7, 2024
“19th Young and Mediterranean Meetings”
From the 2nd to the 7th me and Laura traveled all the way to Nice as representants of PROJECT MARE to participate in the “19th Young and Mediterranean Meetings” to speak on the relevance of beach cleanings and on the overall wellfare of the marine and shore ecosystems of the Mediterranean with several representants of Euro-Mediterranean countries.
Gathering scientists, teachers, students, activists, environmentalists and politicians from Algeria, Tunisia, Lybia, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy and France, the meeting revolved mainly around strategies for environmental sensibilization and activism, chemical and plastic toxicity in wild and human lives, pros and cons of cleaning coastlines, endangered species and habitats and biodiversity assessment of shores. For three intense days participants exposed their proenvironmental activities and ideals in hopes of further networking and better strategies to tackle pollution in the Mediterranean.
“Engagement in defining strategies for a pollutant free and an healthier Sea are needed urgently; sharing the main problematics and the different paradigms of each mediterranean country regarding plastic usage and disposal is KEY for tackling the myriad of epidemics that are threatening severely our most precious resource: Our Sea.” – said one of the participants.
Professor Patrick Fenichel, a renowned endocrinologist, prepared us a enlightening presentation on the effects of chemical substances in the disruption of hormonal responses and early stages of pre natal development. It is a crude and very scary reality. To mention a few examples of his rich argumentation, insecticides that were banned 40ya, such as DDT, are still found in crustacean organisms and human fat. It was evidenced by several scentific studies that these substances are toxic in small concentrations and individuals presenting levels of toxicity in their bodies are prone to a series of diseases, such as obesity, depression and cancer.
Being confronted with these facts is a wake up call to everyone that hears it. Due to it, his presentation was one of the highlights of this meeting.
Several political members of the city of Nice came to welcome us and we were privileged to also meet Daniel Schlosser, a counselor of the french Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs. Other than the official welcoming and greetings each one of them emphasized the importance and urgency of developing strategies that preserve this sea that bonds us intrinsically and how harder it gets each year to make this meeting possible due to the lack of economical funds. That being said it would be expected to have the full attention of all the audience and participants. It didn’t happen. Several times for several minutes people were distracted on their social medias while other peers were presenting their points of view and organizations, missing out the main messages that presenters wanted to transmit. More than once people were facing their PowerPoints reading through their presentations from begining to end, showing minimal preparation.
It is not right.
If we are representants of our countries it is because we should care the most about its environmental affairs and the repercussions it has in daily life and well-being of its inhabitants and species. Full attention and interest is required.
Animal wellfare was another discussed subject in the conference. In Tunisia the multinational supermarket chain Carrefour sells acquaculture fish in terrible health shape: eyes, fins and ventral hemorrhages are clearly visible and eventually rotting of dorsal fins due to bacterial infections. Personally, as an animal wellfare activist and environmentalist I found it horrifying. How can animals be raised in this way and sold to people? I raised my voice and manifested my incredulity and shock to participants, to which some of them coldly replied that it is OK to sell fish like this since they do not pose any threats to human wellfare.
I wondered: How is it possible to stand up for species conservation if we do not care about animal wellfare? How can we care for several animal species if we are nor sensible nor aware of an animal’s pain? Sensient beings have a complex nervous system that makes them allert and reactive to their sorroundings. Other than the amazing senses seen in nature, sensibility to touch and pain exist. Even if we consume animal products, we should not ignore this nor to be disrespectful and cruel towards animals. Being in a pro environment conference, I was not expecting this indifference. It got me strikely demotivated.
Fortunately, we had amazing presentations on greenwashing – ways of raising awareness to local communities and we’ve also seen the amazing work some volunteers are doing with their shorelines out of their own savings, resources, motivation and effort.
In conclusion, me and Laura had high expectations on this meeting, we prepared ourselves the best we could and other than having communication as our strong side, we were passionate and ambitious towards our presentation. We were disappointed with the lack of interest and sensibility of some participants. If we want to find strategies to preserve this precious resource that’s our Sea, we need to be knowledgeable, eagerly curious and urgently willing to establish connections between countries. Presence, passionate people, believers and dreamers are fully required. We did our best and we transmitted our message with all of our preparation and heart. We hope next year’s editions gathers all the conditions that we thought were lacking in this one.
We keep active and hopeful. We will not lower down our voices.
